On 8/25/2016 12:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> Since as you say, it is simply a matter of mental orientation, it
> isn't a surprise that people in different parts of the world had the
> same thought, if they did. I suspect the correspondence adds
> authenticity to the idea while loosening dogmatic restrictions for
> you.
>
> It might be more fruitful to compare the zen tasks, that might be
> distracted from by the supernatural, with stoic tasks, than to notice
> that both discount the supernatural. Does stoicism have provide tasks
> with specific self modification in mind? It might be true that in the
> end the zen devotee realizes that no modification was necessary, but
> again the tasks were undertaken to bring him to that realization. I
> also suspect that realization would not be the only difference.
Stoicism is famous for its tasks with specific
self modification in mind. Pierre Hadot wrote
a French book on them. The famous Stoic
masters, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,
etc. teach tasks of mental culture that are
very close to those in Buddhism and
Stoicism, though at a lesser level of technicity.
Eastern Orthodoxy has tons of such tasks,
derived from Neoplatonism and perhaps from
contact with Indian yoga (Hinduist?
Buddhist?) The founder of Neoplatonism,
Plotinus, went on a Greek war expedition in
the Near East and met with Indian
gymnosophists (yogi from Buddhism?
Hinduism?), so there may be direct
influence from India, and Eastern Orthodoxy
has much that resembles Indian yoga. Roman
Catholicism strongly objects to such Eastern
Orthodox yoga-like self-induction of ecstasy,
for it only admits of God's grace in such
ecstasy.
Stoicism takes God to be the universal, the
only universal, and as such we are parts and
parcels of him, therefore we are already
whole and perfect just as we are, but this
thought is more implicit than explicit, though
advocates of passivity like Madame Guyon
and Fénelon want us to let us be acted on by
God and thus be God himself, in the absence
of ourselves to interfere with him. The only
modification from our side then is to abstain
from ourselves in favour of God, who then
acts us, in our stead, and that is all we need
to do, namely to leave ourselves vacant for
God to do what he wants by way of us as his
mere vessels. This is one valid (albeit rare)
take of Stoicism, which is amazingly close to
much Daoism (and some versions of
Buddhism).
You said:
<<The world is full of people for whom the
supernatural is the essence and
impersonal/natural is the frill. Of course
these are mental orientations. One does
not invalidate the other. Neither are they
the same. In fact, the ultimate reality might
be something else entirely that we simply
don't have a mental orientation for.>>
I don't know whether you are aware, but
you have implicitly embraced an
anti-Jewish mythology position, because
in Jewish mythology, it (Jewish tradition)
is not a mental orientation, but a mere
expression of reality, more explicitly the
way God expresses himself, in full rigour
and for real, and not in a symbolic or
idealist manner. It is as brutally realist
and literalist as Communism, like with
our friend Niunian, who is both a
Communist and a Christian.
Tang Huyen